Chuck Schumer Calls Family Research Council ‘Controversial’

New York’s very liberal senator, Democrat Chuck Schumer, doesn’t like me. I can’t say this comes as a great surprise. But he has taken to the floor of the Senate to denounce my organization, the Family Research Council. He calls us “right-wing.” Oooh. That’s really bad. He says our proposals are “controversial.”

He says the Republicans who voted against the latest Continuing Resolution (CR) to fund the government have been egged on by “right-wing groups” such as Heritage Action for America, the 501(c)(4) affiliate of the Heritage Foundation, and the Family Research Council—because this CR continues to give millions of taxpayer dollars to Planned Parenthood.

I’m reminded of the time Heritage President Ed Feulner went to Moscow, right after the collapse of communism. He was approached by an elderly Russian lady who thanked him for all that the Heritage Foundation had done during the Cold War. Feulner asked her how she could know anything good about the Heritage Foundation he heads. The pages of Pravda and Izvestia were controlled by the Communist Party and never contained anything but the most hateful denunciations of that flagship conservative organization.

“That’s how we knew you were good,” the Russian lady said. “If the party didn’t like you, you had to be good.”

There’s wisdom in her logic. Getting attacked by Sen. Schumer is actually good news.

Think about that for a moment. Planned Parenthood gets some $360 million from our taxes and kills more than 300,000 unborn children every year in this country. Worldwide, it is a leading abortion advocate whose work contributes to the deaths of some 50 million unborn children annually. It is bad enough that a so-called nonprofit organization does this, but when we call for an end to federal money for it, we are controversial?

Under Planned Parenthood’s rule in liberal New York City, four of every 10 pregnancies end in abortion and six of every 10 black babies are aborted. And we are controversial?

Planned Parenthood always counters that it doesn’t use federal funds for abortions. Of course, they charge for abortions. But money is fungible. Federal funds help Planned Parenthood build, maintain, and advocate for its vast empire. We subsidize the hefty salary of Planned Parenthood’s president—who just happens to make as much as the President of the United States .

Schumer would doubtless think President Eisenhower was a “right-wing” fellow.

But moderate Ike told a 1959 press conference that we should not go down the road of funding so-called family planning outfits such as Planned Parenthood. I can’t imagine a federal activity more “inappropriate,” Ike said then. President Eisenhower was forever warning us not to bust the budget. No wonder those were called Happy Days.

Schumer wouldn’t like President Reagan either. President Reagan struck out funding for Planned Parenthood from all eight of the budgets he submitted to Congress in the ’80s. Liberals in Congress such as Chuck Schumer always shoved it back in.

We have to ask Schumer: Where in the Constitution does it give the federal government the right to shovel money at a group whose primary purpose is to facilitate the sexual activity of minors and unmarried persons? If we have a First Amendment right of free exercise of religion, doesn’t that mean that our families and our faith should not be trod upon by groups funded with our own money?

We would not support federal funding of Planned Parenthood and its killing machine if there were no budget crisis, if the federal treasury were overflowing with money. Surely, in the current fiscal emergency, cutting Planned Parenthood should be a top priority for responsible legislators.